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The Senate Education Committee agreed with Kuehl in an 8-3 vote on May 3 and sent the bill to the Senate floor. On May 11, the majority of senate (22-15) passed the bill. Now it just needs the approval of the Assembly, which it's expected to get, and Schwarzenegger's John Hancock, which is by no means guaranteed.
So the uproar goes on, and includes comments from those who oppose the bill from a slightly different angle. Elizabeth Walch, for example, who has children in Scotts Valley (CA) schools, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel on May 14, “My problem is that it does not allow those who are morally opposed to it to speak out. I agree that we need to teach tolerance for everybody … but it's not fair to those who value the traditional family.”
So then, you don't believe in tolerance for everyone, Elizabeth. Not that there's anything wrong with that …
Oh, wait — there is something wrong with that!
In the words of Bill Maher, “New rule!” The next person that says “traditional family” has to follow those words with “and I am a bigoted moron” in robot-speak. Bleep. Bleep. After that, he must spend a month at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, not sitting in a corner morally opposing something, but learning what tolerance actually means, and then working as a tour guide to help others understand the effect intolerance has had on the world.
Then there's Debra J. Saunders, who wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, “I have no desire to gay-bash, as I recognize the trauma gay men and lesbians endure growing up in America. But there are plenty of other kids who struggle and suffer through their teens. Fat kids. Nerds. Devoutly religious kids who think homosexuality is a sin. You can't create a curriculum for all those roots of angst.”
Well, first, anxiety or “angst” isn't rooted in weight, intelligence, religion or even in sexuality, it's the result of ridicule and pressure to be thin, dumb-down, believe in this or that God, or be straight. An overweight and smart Jewish kid is perfectly happy in class until someone calls him “a roly-poly faggot kike.”
The real issue is one of promoting discrimination. The board of education should not be in the business of promoting “angst” by giving children information that's inaccurate. And most instructors know that. Good teachers don't routinely tell “fat” kids that it's healthy to be overweight, and they don't tell “nerds” that being stupid would benefit them more. Religious kids, devout or not, are already protected by law, as noted earlier. But what's to protect Marina Gatto, the student quoted in the intro, from the intolerant teacher who told her that AIDS was spread by gay people as punishment for their lifestyle? Kuehl's bill.
Intolerance. In those eleven letters lie the reality beneath the all the talk of sex, sex changes, mental molestation, moral opposition and angst. The despicable and very sad truth is that the majority of the people who oppose the bill simply want to continue to promote the idea that gay people are sick and have no value, without being contradicted.
They are not really worried that little Susie Grade-schooler will skip home from school one day and announce that she wants a breast augmentation — not really. They know what “age-appropriate study” means and, more importantly, what it doesn't mean. They are also aware of the bullying and violence that is sometimes perpetrated on children who are ‘different.' And — this is a big one — they are profoundly aware that children are faced everyday with things they've been taught to morally oppose, and they survive.
I'll go out on limb here and predict that it's more likely Susie will become a twice-divorced, pregnant meth-whore before she tells daddy that she'd like to have a penis.
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